Now, just because I don’t write up every episode of NCIS for you, don’t go thinking I’ve missed a single one of its 200 episodes. I still love this show, and if you haven’t seen it yet, check out my first love letter to the best-looking navy cops around. There just isn’t time for me to blog it every week I’m afraid. However, this week is different. Not because it’s a milestone for the show, but because they chose to mark the moment with a very different kind of episode.

[Kinda spoilery from here on in…]

This isn’t the first time NCIS has entered an alternate reality (see the first two episodes of season three when the entire team have a Sixth Sense thing going on), and I have to confess the idea of Gibbs being in limbo while his life flashes before his eyes had me a little anxious. I should have known better.

Life Before His Eyes is not just fine by the show’s usually high standards, it’s full of rewards for the long-time viewer. The diner in which reality is temporarily suspended for Gibbs is packed with familiar faces from the present and the past. Jenny Shepard, Mike Franks, Joan Matteson, Ari Haswari, Caitlin Todd, Anne Gibbs (she’s a redhead, naturally), McCallister, Pacci, Pedro Hernandez, and, of course, Shannon and Kelly all make appearances at some point.

It’s also a Gibbs-centric episode, and who’s going to complain about that? And, in addition, it may just let the man heal a little. Lord knows he deserves to. As Mike Franks tells him, “You solved hundreds of cases, you helped families get over burying their dead by putting away murderers and terrorists.”

You could see this as a loving riposte to all the NCIS fan fiction/forum wishlists as it answers a whole lot of “but what if?” questions along the way. What if Cait hadn’t died on that rooftop? What if Gibbs hadn’t killed Pedro Hernandez? What if Shannon and Kelly hadn’t testified and been murdered? I, naturally, blubbed more than once.

And if all that isn’t enough, we also discover that Jimmy Palmer is absolutely ripped beneath those scrubs. As Gibbs murmurs at the end of Abby’s disclosure of her progress on this week’s case, “Who knew Palmer had abs like that?”

It’s not the perfect episode to start watching NCIS from, but it is a lovely present from NCIS to its fans – the next best thing to a personally-delivered Gibbs slap… Here’s to another 200 episodes!

Lord knows what this says about me, but I prefer him in silver fox mode… As Simon, CJ’s secret service agent in The West Wing, or as Gibbs he’s swoonsome. And when he converses in sign language I go all peculiar…